Impressions: Australians in Vietnam

Australians in Vietnam; Photography, art and the war

From the first moment of Australian involvement
in 1962 until the present, the Vietnam War has been represented in
a myriad of different ways. This essay will look at the photography
taken during the war by Defence Public Relations staff and enlisted
personnel, the work of official war artists and others during the
war and art made since the end of the war. It seeks to explain some
of what these objects signify and the role they have played in shaping
Australians' perceptions of the Vietnam War.

Television, magazine and newspaper pictures
provided the major source of visual imagery during the war. Television,
in particular, changed the way in which Australians received images
of conflict with its ability to show audiences graphic film footage
of events almost as soon as they occurred. At the same time, still
photography was produced by the Department of Defence for publication
in newspapers and magazines. Unlike in previous wars, Defence did
not appoint official military history photographers and cinematographers,
relying instead on their own Public Relations photographers. The result
was that most of these images have greater value as promotional material
rather than as documentation of the conditions and conduct of the
war. Amateur photographers from within the ranks took snapshots to
act as a personal record and as mementos of the events, places and
people they had seen. Freelance photojournalists also covered the
War producing some of the grittiest images, which were highly saleable
to publishers.

The Australian War Memorial holds some
10,000 Defence Public Relations negatives from Vietnam. While this
may seem a great many it should be realised that they represent the
work of some forty photographers over a period of nine years. In contrast,
the Memorial holds more than 8000 photographs from the Korean War,
covering a period of less than three years.

While Defence Public Relations photographers
worked in the same theatres and situations as combat troops, including
the bases, the towns and cities, on operations, aircraft and helicopter
flights and at sea, they operated under significant constraints. The
most obvious of these was the decision about what subject matter was
appropriate: the photographs were intended as promotional material
rather than factual records of the war. Few formal guidelines were
issued to the photographers yet the majority of the images they captured
were self-censored, officially vetted or had inherent restrictions
imposed by their use in the Defence 'home town' program. [1]

The 'home town' program was an extensive
public relations scheme whereby the Department of Defence sent, solicited
and unsolicited, photographs and news stories to the media across
Australia, deliberately tailoring the content to have local appeal.
It is for this reason that almost all personnel depicted in the photographs
are identified by name and rank and their place of civilian residence
or origin is given. In this way Defence was able to provide its campaign
with an element of 'local-boy-makes-good', concentrating on lighter,
human interest stories and without having to concede too much of the
grim reality of war. Informal, chatty captions were included with
the photographs so that editors of small local papers, often the only
full-time members of staff on such publications, had most of the copy
work already done for them.

EKN/67/0130/VN B Company, 7RAR, about to be air-lifted back to Nui Dat after a cordon and search of Phuoc Hai village, 8 August 1967

Many of the photographs were taken on
the bases used by Australians, and these are imbued with a typically
Australian ethos of mateship and camaraderie. Others, taken in cities
and towns such as Saigon and Vung Tau, have a deliberate tourist feel
to them. A large number of photographs deal with the civil aid programs
and show Australian troops dispensing medical and humanitarian aid
and gifts to grateful villagers, particularly the elderly, women and
children.

Photographs of patrols and operations
generally depict Australian troops in heroic, deliberately posed shots
of helicopter 'insertions' and 'extractions', or stoically pressing
on through mud or forest. Images of Australian wounded appear, but
the injured are always conscious and being given medical attention.
Even images of events as drastic as a major plasma transfusion in
the field are reassuring in their suggestion that modern medical science
is available to all, no matter where they may be. The photographs
of 'dust offs' (medical evacuations by helicopter) suggest that full
hospital facilities are only a radio message away.

There is only one series of photographs
that documents the death of an Australian soldier. These few colour
photographs depict a chaplain giving the Last Rites to the dying man,
already partially wrapped in the hoochie used as a substitute body
bag in the field, and several later stages as his body is removed
to a helicopter pick-up point, winched aboard and flown away. These
images were never released during the war. [2]

The enemy are always depicted as defeated.
They are shown hands tied, blindfolded, awaiting interrogation. Although
now unarmed and looking meek, they are always closely guarded, suggesting
they are dangerous and treacherous. Although enemy dead are photographed
on many occasions graphic images were never made public at the time
of the war. Army Public Relations photographer Sergeant Chris Bellis'
image taken on the morning after a night ambush against Viet Cong
at Thua Tich in June 1969 is an example. [3] The
contorted body of a Viet Cong wearing a light shirt and shorts, his
head haloed by barbed wire, dominates the entire foreground. In the
middle distance, with a second Vietnamese body, are seven Australian
soldiers milling about. In the original albums presented to the Australian
War Memorial by Defence Public Relations 'NOT FOR RELEASE' is written
heavily over the small print of this negative. There are many similar
examples to be found throughout the albums.

EKN/69/0183/VN Chaplain attached to 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC Battalion) administerting Last Rites to an Australian soldier killed in action, Phuoc Tuy province

The amateur photography of service personnel
generally follows the same themes and subjects as the Public Relations
photographs. Many have a similar bonhomie. These photographs were
taken as records of the experiences undergone, events encountered
and friendships made during the war. While most of these photographs
fall into the rather detached reportage of tourist snap shots some
show the personality and attitudes of their authors. Images of the
enemy, in particular, fall into the latter group.

Many service personnel photographed the
bodies of dead Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops. In these images
one gets a sense of morbid interest in violent death, perhaps because
the photographers faced the same potential fate themselves, perhaps
because of macabre voyeurism. Other images such as photographs of
Viet Cong suspects awaiting interrogation reveal a sense of superiority
over or scorn for a defeated foe.

The Vietnam War has been variously described
as 'the most photographed war' and 'the television war'. It was certainly
covered exhaustively by professional photojournalists, including Americans
Robert Cappa and Larry Burrows, Welshman Philip Jones Griffiths and
Englishmen Tim Page and Don McCullin, all of whose reputations rested
on their reportage of war from around the world. Neil Davis is perhaps
the best known Australian photojournalist to go to Vietnam, yet he,
like most others, worked with US and South Vietnamese troops. Given
the Australian media's general refusal to post correspondents to Vietnam
long-term and their propensity to use images from international wire
agencies, most reportage of the Vietnam War in Australia tended to
have a bias toward depicting US operations; Australian actions became
just a small part of the bigger picture.

'The camera doesn't lie' is believed by
many people to be an aphorism; it is not. The public perception of
photography is that it is a factual record, a moment of unquestionable
reality suspended in time. But photographs are open to manipulation
like any other image and this is true of those taken in Vietnam for
consumption in Australia.

The subjects of the Department of Defence
Public Relations photographs have been carefully chosen, posed and
edited. They have been further manipulated through association with
the pre-written captions. They use a background of myth and symbol
familiar to Australians including mateship, courage, a belief in the
rightness of the country's cause, implied references to the original
ANZACs, as well as tourism and travel advertising, to promote political
and military ideologies within a broader social context. [4]

The messages contained in private photographs
are also subject to manipulation. The most basic of these is the same
as for the Public Relations photographs: this moment or that, this
person or another, which scene, which angle? Words associated with
these snapshots also transform the meaning of the images. The handwritten
notes beside the photographs in family albums or the anecdotes told
by the photographers when showing the pictures to relatives or friends
affects the interpretation as personal beliefs are projected into
the images.

Perhaps the most famous Australian photograph
of the Vietnam War is by the Army Public Relations photographer Sergeant
Mike Coleridge. Taken on 26 August 1967 at Phuoc Hai it depicts members
of 5 Platoon, B Company, 7RAR, beside the road to Dat Do after completing
a cordon and search mission. US Army Iroquois helicopters are landing
in the dusty road to pick up the Australians and return them to the
base at Nui Dat. This photograph began its rise in popularity as late
as the 1980s, when it first became available through the Australian
War Memorial for commercial use. It has since become an icon and has
even been used in a larger-than-life format, sand-blasted onto one
of the steles of the National Memorial to the Australian Vietnam Forces,
which is on ANZAC Parade in Canberra. [5]

The status of this photograph as the epitome
of Australia's experience in Vietnam has come about for a number of
reasons. It is a well-composed action shot with a close-up group of
young Australian men in the foreground, tired but successful after
their mission. It shows helicopters, singly the most dominant symbol
of the war in a US-influenced public mind. The photograph has been
seized by publishers of both fiction and non-fiction and used on endless
book covers, in magazines, journals and newspapers across the country.
It has become etched into Australia's consciousness because of its
constant reproduction. The image is also non-confronting. There is
a safeness about it that almost belies the fact it was taken in a
war zone; it could be from any training exercise in Australia. What
it ultimately reveals is that Australians have claimed an image that
is comfortably familiar in a popular culture influenced by American
stereotypes to represent their actions in Vietnam.

Coleridge's photograph stands in stark
contrast to those by Malcolm Browne of the self-immolation of a Buddhist
monk in Saigon in 1963, Eddie Adams of the execution of a Viet Cong
suspect in a Saigon street in 1968, and Wing Wong Ut of the little
girl, Kim Phuc, running naked, burning with napalm, fleeing the destruction
of her village in 1972. These images symbolise the war internationally.
They have a place in Australian's consciousness of the war in Vietnam
but are categorised as other people's actions in other parts of the
country.

The fine arts are another medium through
which Australian perceptions of the war have been formed.

The Australian War Memorial first decided
to appoint official war artists to work in Vietnam in July 1965, but
it was not until March 1967 that the first of the two artists commissioned
actually arrived there. The almost two-year delay was caused by a
number of factors, including difficulty in drawing up a shortlist
of artists, the decline of a commission by Ray Crooke (the Memorial's
first choice) and the fact that the artists had to undergo the same
rigorous jungle warfare training at Canungra, in Queensland, as combat
troops. Indeed as the Department of Defence would not compromise the
number of troops allocated for Vietnam the two artists were expected
to perform as active soldiers if needed. The artists were Bruce Fletcher
and Ken McFadyen and the 300 or so drawings and paintings they produced
form the core of the Memorial's Vietnam art collection.

Bruce Fletcher carried out his commission
as an official war artist between February and September 1967 and
he returned to work for the Memorial again in 1970 when he painted
a large commemorative painting of the Battle of Long Tan.

Fletcher worked mainly in fibre-tipped
pen, although he also produced a small number of oil paintings while
in Vietnam. Only a few days after arriving in Vietnam he was injured
when a captured Viet Cong weapon accidentally discharged on board
a RAAF flight between Saigon and Vung Tau. Consequently, Fletcher
spent most of his tour in the hospital ward at the 1st Australian
Logistical Base at Vung Tau. There he set about drawing the personnel
and activities at the base and the hospital. His work includes rapid
sketches of the tents and equipment of the Australians, portraits
of known sitters and unknown ones performing daily duties. In a series
of oil portraits he portrayed soldiers kitted out and engaged in a
variety of army work, although the sitters may not have actually performed
the duties they are depicted doing. Fletcher also worked at the 1st
Australian Task Force base at Nui Dat and occasionally in the field
with the troops.

Ken McFadyen received his commission as
an official war artist in July 1967 and was discharged ten months
later in May 1968.

McFadyen produced mostly oil paintings
in Vietnam and some charcoal drawings. He depicted the landscape and
terrain of Phuoc Tuy province, as well as images of helicopter 'insertions'
and 'extractions' and scenes from search and destroy patrols. McFadyen
regularly accompanied troops on operations which often meant working
in very arduous and dangerous conditions. In one statement to the
Australian War Memorial accompanying his paintings McFadyen recalled
'feeling very tired, wet and muddy, covered in small black leeches
competing with thousands of amber coloured ants for a place on my
body'. [6]

Both Fletcher and McFadyen were realistic,
illustrative artists and their work has a literalness about it. The
works have an emotional detachment to them. It has been suggested
that this may have been the result of having to rely on technique
to work rapidly in the field under threat of enemy fire, that they
needed to shut out emotion in a psychological war, or that they saw
themselves as observers for whom it was inappropriate to make personal
comments about the war. [7]

Fletcher's and McFadyen's work was first
shown publicly in the late 1960s, when around thirty paintings and
drawings were included in the Australian War Memorial's first long-term
display about the War. There was no tour of Australia organised to
show the works to the public as there had been for official war art
after the First World War, during and after the Second World War and
following the Korean War.

Sixteen official war artists had been
appointed during the First World War and forty for the Second World
War. While the Memorial did consider sending McFadyen to Vietnam for
a second time, he did not go, and no other official war artists were
appointed. Regrettably, the Memorial's Board of Trustees thought that
the 300 works already received were a sufficient artistic representation
of the War.

Only a small quantity of Australian art
produced during the Vietnam War was concerned with the war, and much
of that was protest art. Australian artists at that time were more
concerned with exploring abstraction, and the war was also unfashionable
in the art world. The situation was a very different one in the US
where the Vietnam War inspired the ferocious Napalm, 1962,
and Assassins (later renamed Vietnam), 1972, series
by Leon Golub, James Rosenquist's gigantic painting F-111,
1965, and Edward Kienholz's monumental sculpture/installation The
portable war memorial, 1968.

Very few Australian artists made any major
statements through their art about the war and there were few public
exhibitions that dealt with it. Most artistic activity took the form
of poster-making for the protest movement.

During the Vietnam War, for the first
time in Australia's history, most wartime posters did not express
an officially sanctioned viewpoint. Instead, posters documented the
protest against Western involvement in the conflict. The posters expressed
the opinions of an increasing proportion of Australians who had changed
from being a passive audience into motivated producers of their own
placards.

Posters were produced by a broad range
of Australians including amateur artists, professional graphic designers
and fine artists. The posters of the anti-war movement generally adopted
the imagery of government posters from earlier wars and of the pictures
of war from art history. They employed pictures of flags, bombs and
weaponry. Depictions of personalities (including US and Australian
politicians and generals on the one hand and Ho Chi Minh and leading
dissenters on the other), victims (in which the protest movement included
both Vietnamese citizens and Australian conscripts) and atrocities
were all used to deliver messages. While they were effective in mobilising
dissent they came up with no essentially different ways for the poster
to oppose conflict. What is remarkable about them is that they form
the first large-scale, coherent voice of protest from Australians
against the conduct of their own government.

Of the artists who did produce important
works relating to the War, Noel Counihan and Clifton Pugh are among
the most notable.

Noel Counihan is acknowledged as one of
Australia's finest social realist painters, well known for his pictures
of miners, labourers, street scenes and demonstrations. In 1950, when
he was working in Britain, Counihan produced a portfolio of twelve
linocuts titled War or peace which dealt with the impact of
war on society and examined the growing threat posed by the atomic
bomb.

P01636.014 Private Paul Ryan, 7RAR, with an M108 mobile howitzer on loan from the US Army, South Vietnam 1967

During the Vietnam War Counihan made the
Boy in a helmet series of paintings, drawings and prints in
which Australian soldiers are shown either as aggressors or victims
or both together. Each image in the series depicts a young soldier
wearing a large American-style helmet. An early painted version portrays
a muscular half-naked soldier full of youthful purity, yet with the
potential for violence and destruction symbolised in his tightly gripped
machine-gun. As the series progresses the bodies become more emaciated,
the faces more terrified, or, as in one painting, so distorted that
the mouth howls with rage and pain. Counihan powerfully expresses
his belief that the young men sent to fight in Vietnam returned brutalised
by war and insensitive to its meaning; his once unsullied youths lose
all innocence; they with distress at the beasts they have become.

Clifton Pugh had served as an infantryman
with the AIF in New Guinea during the Second World War and with the
British Commonwealth Occupation Forces in Japan immediately afterwards.
Following his discharge he studied under William Dargie at the National
Gallery of Victoria School through the soldier rehabilitation and
training schemes. Pugh was particularly respected for his portrait
paintings and his images of the Australian bush, outback and deserts.

In 1966 Pugh joined the anti-war movement
and painted Vietnam body counts. This painting shows a tangle
of battered, twisted bodies presided over by the figure of a soldier.
In this work Pugh fuses the images of carnage in Vietnam being delivered
by television, with his own memories of death from the Second World
War, making a statement about the slaughter that is an inevitable
part of all wars.

Other artists such as David Boyd, Dick
Watkins, Gareth Sansom, Robert Grieve, Udo Sellbach and even George
Browning, who had been an official war artist during the Second World
War, also produced work influenced by or protesting against the war,
but this theme tended to be only one among many for them. Reaction
to the war was more sustained in the work of students of art schools.

If any art about Vietnam has had a strong
influence on Australian perceptions of the war it is that done after
the cessation of hostilities between Australia and Vietnam in 1973.
Many veterans have made art that reflects on their wartime experiences,
some in an amateur capacity, others as professional artists.

The imagery of amateur artists shows a
remarkable consistency. Many veterans have produced paintings, drawings
and cartoons about the psychological effects of the war. Images of
helicopters and the enemy swirl together above the heads of veterans
in many works, influenced by elements from popular culture such as
music and cinema.

Many Australians of Vietnamese origin
have produced work about the war, but these have only been seen by
a wider public in very recent times. The full impact of these artists
on Australian perceptions of the war is still developing.

Ray Beattie was a national serviceman
in Vietnam between 1970 and 1971. After the war he studied at the
Victorian College of the Arts. The war left an indelible impression
on him and has formed a major theme in his work. Although it has not
been shown publicly, he is working on a series of postcard-size images,
one for every day he spent in Vietnam, that explore his response to
the events and people there.

Image for a dead man, 1980, is
one of three large paintings from a series by Beattie called Sentimentality
kills. [8] In these paintings Beattie expresses
his reactions to the personal ramifications of having participated
in the Vietnam War. Image for a dead man is a large photorealist
still life depicting a wooden chair with an army jacket hung over
its back. Painted medals are pinned to the jacket (as is the real
'Rising sun' badge from Beattie's uniform). His identity discs and
slouch hat are also depicted hanging on the chair. On the seat is
a folded Merchant Navy flag. Behind the chair is a vast expanse of
cold grey wall and a disconnected telephone line running along the
skirting board at the bottom.

This painting expresses a soldier's grief
at the loss of comrades. The jacket, hat and medal are Beattie's.
The jacket retains the shape of a wearer who is no longer there. Although
Beattie survived the war he has stated that every time he heard of
a comrade's death in Vietnam he felt that a small piece of himself
died as well. The empty wall behind the chair symbolises the nothingness
that is death; the disconnected telephone line the impossibility of
communication between the living and the dead. The Merchant Navy flag
was a present from the artist's father who sailed under it during
the Second World War; it evokes memories of other casualties in other
wars.

This is a particularly poignant painting,
full of genuine emotion and sadness, that also has meaning as a memorial
for the dead. But it has also provoked strong antipathy from some
sections of the Vietnam veteran community; they see the work as disrespectful,
claim that the order of display of the painted medals is incorrect,
assert that there should not be two Vietnam service medals as shown
(Beattie was in fact mistakenly presented with two) and, without realising
it is a Red Ensign, object that the flag too is incorrect. But Beattie
did not intend to make a formal portrayal of an army uniform. He intended
it to be a contemplative, personalised statement about the repercussions
of war and his tribute to the dead.

Dennis Trew served in the Royal Australian
Navy as a crewman aboard the HMAS Sydney during the Vietnam
War. HMAS Sydney was the recommissioned aircraft carrier that
provided the main sea transport for troops and equipment between Australia
and Vietnam. In 1992, in response to the dedication of the National
Memorial to the Australian Vietnam Forces and an invitation from the
Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Trew made Names from the Book
of the Dead. [9]

This is a monumental work made up of 108
toned laser prints. Around a central image of Trew, taken from a photograph
from the artist's enlistment records, are arranged images and biographies
of some of the men who died in Vietnam, based on The Australian
newspaper's 1992 souvenir publication 500; the Australians
who died in Vietnam. Across the image of himself Trew has written
a comparison to Charon, the ferryman of ancient Greek myth who took
the souls of the dead across the River Styx into Hades.

This powerful work explores the relationship
between Trew and the men who died, some of whom Trew may have helped
transport to Vietnam. It is also a kind of memorial, reaffirming the
identity and the individuality of each of the dead - something which
is lacking in mere numerical lists of the casualties of war. At another
level the work addresses the question of what constitutes an appropriate
medium for a memorial; this one is made of paper, coloured to look
like ancient newsprint, not the bronze or stone which we usually expect.
[10]

Trevor Lyons volunteered for National
Service in 1965 and graduated from the Officer Training Unit, Scheyville,
NSW, as a Second Lieutenant. He saw service in Vietnam with 2RAR during
1967 and 1968. In 1968 he received severe facial injuries from an
exploding landmine and was sent back to Australia where he underwent
major reconstructive surgery. Before the War Lyons had worked as a
draughtsman and in the late 1980s he graduated from the Queensland
College of Art where he had studied print making.

Journeys in my head, 1987, is a
confronting series of 22 etched self-portraits based on Lyons' traumatic
experiences in Vietnam. Continually reworking the same printing plate
Lyons cuts through the tissues of his face and explores the deep psychic
wounds and scars that resulted from his accident. What starts as a
tentative, ghostly three-quarter profile turns to look directly at
the viewer as the physical and emotional distress felt by Lyons overwhelm
him. [11]

Tragically, Lyons died aged 45 in 1990,
six months after being diagnosed with leukemia.

Jennifer McDuff's husband, Barry, was
a national serviceman conscripted in the first ballot in 1965. His
army service was deferred until he had completed a university degree
and a year as a probationary teacher. He eventually completed a tour
of duty during 1969 and 1970. Barry has since been diagnosed with
clinical depression as a result of his war service.

In 1992, for her post-graduate degree,
McDuff created 22 etchings, one for each year of her married life
to then, which are framed with the printing plates cut in two and
tied together to resemble dog tags. The series is collectively titled
One man's war, a woman's perspective. [12]
The series examines the experiences of her husband in Vietnam and
their consequences for his life post-war. The works speak about the
impact the war has had on the relationship between the artist and
her husband and how it has affected a father's relationship with his
children. Family tragedy, including the drowning of one daughter,
are mixed with memories of Vietnam to present the evolution of one
family's life.

What have been the visual images that
have shaped the Australian perception of Vietnam and what do they
tell us? Television and still photography provided more visual images
of the war than the fine arts. Yet, although a significant quantity
of photography was made by Australians, it was American material obtained
from international wire services that dominated the media. Among veteran
(and their families), this was supplemented by the photographs and
cine film they took while in Vietnam.

In the years following the war the fine
arts have made important statements about the Vietnam War but it is
only recently that this has reached a wider audience in Australia.
Our memories of the war are still most heavily influenced by photographic
material, and this takes two forms: the images created at the time
and the fictitious creations of popular cinema, mostly from the United
States, with its revisionist rewriting of the American experience.
This latter is partly accepted here by some Australians, particularly
those too young to have direct knowledge of the War, as a representation
of the Australian experience.

If we are to find a true visual record
for the Australian experience of Vietnam we will have to look closely
at all the material available, determine what it signifies and how,
collaging the competing narratives into one multi-faceted picture.

Simon Forrester
Art Section
Australian War Memorial

Notes

1 Anecdotal evidence suggests
that a vast number of images were culled in the selection process
by Defence Public Relations. Often only a single image from an entire
roll of film was kept, the rest being destroyed. There are also very
few colour negatives for Defence Public Relations photographs. Photographers
were instructed to use only black and white film because the images
were intended for publication in monotone newspapers and for broadcast
on black and white television. Several photographers were reprimanded
for using colour stock obtained from US troops.

2 AWM negative numbers
EKN/69/0181/VN to EKN/69/0188/VN

3 AWM negative number
BEL/69/0372/VN

4 cf. Stuart Hall, 'The
determinations of news photographs', in Stanley Cohen and Jock Young
(eds), The manufacture of news: Deviance, social problems and the
mass media, Constable, London, 1982